Multimedia

Narratives

Site Information

Memoirs & Diaries - The Best 500 Cockney War Stories - The "Tich" Touch and Other Stories

Published in London
in 1921, The Best 500 Cockney War Stories
comprised, in the words of its newspaper publisher (The London Evening
News) "a remembering and retelling of those war days when laughter
sometimes saved men's reason".

Sponsored Links

The collection of short
memoirs, some 500 in total, is
divided into five categories - Action, Lull, Hospital,
High Seas and Here and There. This page contains five
stories from Lull,
led by The "Tich" Touch.

Other sections within the collection can
be accessed
using the sidebar to the right.

The "Tich" Touch

We had survived the landing operations at Murmansk, in North Russia, and each
company had received a number of sets of skis, which are very awkward things to
manage until you get used to them.

On one occasion when we were practising, a "son of London," after repeated tumbles, remarked to his pals, who were also
getting some
"ups and downs": "Fancy seein' me dahn Poplar way wiv these fings on; my
little old bunch of trouble would say, 'What's 'e trying ter do nah? Cut aht
Little Tich in the long-boot dance?'"

One of the usual orders had come through to my battalion of the Middlesex
Regiment for a number of men to be detailed for extra regimental duties which
would be likely to take them away from the
battalion for a considerable time. The company I commanded had to provide twenty
men.

It was a golden opportunity to make a selection of those men whose physical
infirmities were more evident than the stoutness of their hearts.

Together with
my company sergeant-major I compiled a list of those who could best be spared
from the trenches, and the following day they were paraded for inspection before
moving off.

As I approached, one of the men who had been summing up his comrades and
evidently realised the reason for their selection, remarked in a very audible
Cockney whisper, "What I says is, if you was to search the 'ole of Norvern
France you wouldn't find a smarter body o' men!"

"Nobby" (late Captain,
Middlesex Regiment), Potters Bar, Middlesex

"You'd Pay a Tanner at the Zoo!"

During the floods in Palestine in 1917 I had to be sent down the line with an
attack of malaria.

Owing to the roads being deep in water, I was strapped in an
iron chair pannier on the back of a camel. My sick companion, who balanced me on
the other side of the camel, was a member of the London Regiment affectionately
known as the Hackney Gurkhas.

The Johnnie patiently trudged through the water leading the camel, and kept up
the cry of "Ish Ish!" as it almost slipped down at every step.

I was feeling pretty bad with the swaying, and said to my companion, "Isn't
this the limit?"

"Shurrup, mate!" he replied. "Yer don't know when yer well orf: You'd 'ave
to pay a tanner for this at the Zoo!"

Most ex-soldiers will remember the dreary monotony of "going through the
motions" of every movement in rifle exercises.

We had just evacuated our
position on the night of December 4-5, 1917, at Cambrai, after the German
counter-attack, and, after withstanding several days' severe battering both by
the enemy and the elements, were staggering along, tired and frozen and hungry,
and generally fed up.

When we were deemed to be sufficiently far from the danger
zone the order was given to allow the men to smoke. As practically everyone in
the battalion had been without cigarettes or tobacco for some days the
permission seemed to be wasted.

But I passed the word down, "'C' Company, the
men may smoke," to be immediately taken up by a North Londoner: "Yus, and if
you ain't got no fags you can go through the motions."

Winter 1915, at Wieltje, on the St. Jean Road. We were on post in a
shell-hole in No Man's Land, and the night was black.

Without any warning, my Cockney pal Nobby threw a bomb towards the German
trench, and immediately Fritz sent up dozens of Verey lights. I turned anxiously
to Nobby and asked, "What is it? Did you spot anything?" and was astonished
when he replied, "I wanted ter know the time, and I couldn't see me
blinkin' watch in the dark."